


do not engage

by aubadezayn



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Amnesia, Angst, Body Image, Breeding Kink, Cumplay, Daddy Kink, Dark, Dubious Morality, Explicit Sexual Content, Guilt, M/M, Non-Serum Steve Rogers/Winter Soldier Bucky Barnes | Shrinkyclinks, Pining, Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Protective!Sam Wilson, Self-Esteem Issues, Self-Hatred, Size Kink, Sneaking Around, Top!Bucky, Topping from the Bottom, bottom!Steve, preserum!Steve, shield is hydra, sin - Freeform, sort of??
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-05
Updated: 2016-03-25
Packaged: 2018-05-24 22:21:54
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 14,275
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6168865
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aubadezayn/pseuds/aubadezayn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Post-Winter Soldier where SHIELD has collapsed, and HYDRA is known to have been in control and is expanding, but without the catalyst of the Winter Soldier. Steve is shrunk back to his post-serum body during a minor conflict with Loki, and it won't wear off for several months. During a recon mission where Steve had been told to stay hidden and not engage anyone, because he shouldn't have been on a mission in his state to begin with, Steve sees Bucky. Or the Winter Soldier. Or maybe they're the same person.</p><p>From there, desperate to get Bucky back and raw from being forced back to his weak, vulnerable body, Steve makes some decisions that put more than his life at stake.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. maybe i don't want heaven, if it's not with you.

**Author's Note:**

  * For [apiaristcas (littlelionbabe)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/littlelionbabe/gifts).



> hey ya'll! this is a very sinful fic for my best friend [apiaristcas](http://apiaristcas.tumblr.com) and i hope she enjoys it!! + i hope you enjoy it!
> 
> there is mildly dubious content (not in the first chapter but in the second) in which Steve will have sex with the Winter Soldier, who is only just starting to remember him. this is obviously dubious because as much as the WS and Steve consent, there is brainwashing // amnesia to take into account. if that makes you uncomfortable, or could trigger you, please do not read.
> 
> finally i'm on tumblr at [starspangledsteve](http://starspangledsteve.tumblr.com)! feel free to come yell with me any time.

Loki’s done some terrible things since Steve resurfaced, such as destroying New York City and inviting Chitauri to destroy the entire planet. But what he’s done now, this has to be Loki’s most evil tactic ever. Steve can’t imagine much worse.

 

He thinks all this while standing in front of a full-length mirror in his room, pumping a new inhaler and loathing how big his clothes are on him. The suit had been destroyed by Loki’s magic during the attack (which had invited Tony to all sorts of jibes when they had to bring him back to Avengers tower wrapped in a tarp). The white t-shirt that had once gripped his muscles tightly, now hangs from him like a cape. His entire clavicle was exposed, the fabric falling off one shoulder entirely and he looks like a child dressing up in his father’s clothes.

 

His sweatpants are massive now, tied as tightly as possible on his sharp hipbones but he still has a hand clutching them up. His feet and hands are still disproportionately large for his tiny body, but they’re much smaller than they were after the serum. Now he can’t even wear his shoes without sliding right out of them.

 

It’s terrible, he thinks distantly. He’s weak and small and any one of the people in this house could snap him in half. He should feel flawed, vulnerable. He doesn’t really feel anything though, he just stares at his small self and feels detached. This is his skin, but it’s not the skin he wants or needs or is accustomed to anymore.

 

He rolls the top of the sweatpants and pulls them into a knot with one of Natasha’s hair-ties. They still balloon around his legs and flow when he walks like a skirt, but he can’t be bothered to care as long as they stay up. The shirt is practically a dress; he could forego the pants entirely if Tony wouldn’t harass him for it.

 

Steve heads out of his room to the elevator and steps inside. He presses the button for the penthouse, the Avengers lounge, and steps out onto the cold marble floor when the doors open. His bare feet pad against the floor as he makes his way towards the bar, where he can see Tony sitting on a stool with a StarkPad and the hologram of his work all around him.

 

“Hey.” Steve pulls himself up onto the stool next to Tony, mildly embarrassed by how his legs swing high up from the ground.

 

“Well if it isn’t our own Keebler Elf! How you doin’ Short-Stop?”

 

“Fuck you, Tony.”

 

“Seriously, Bruce and I have been going over your blood sample and this shouldn’t last for much more than a couple months. Six at most. Maybe seven.”

 

“Seven _months_? Tony, I can’t-” Tony stopped him short with a hard look, stepping off his stool and shutting off his StarkPad.

 

“We’ll keep testing and looking, Steve, but for the foreseeable future you’re stuck like this. I’m sorry, if that helps, which it probably doesn’t much.” Tony clapped him on the shoulder, nearly knocking him off the stool from the force. “Try to deal with it.”

 

 

A week later Steve has had three asthma attacks, half a cold, and zero missions. He’s been stuck in the Tower, wearing Natasha’s sweatpants and his own hoodies, sniffling and puffing and watching television. He can’t draw, the blurriness and lack of color driving him insane with desire for his old body.

 

He’s currently curled up on the sofa in his floor’s living room, the massive television turned to reruns of I Love Lucy. The black and white is comforting, and right now he needs that comfort.

 

Everyone has mostly left him alone, besides small shows of solidarity. Natasha lending him her smaller, better fitting clothes without any sort of sass. Thor had given him a hefty clap on the shoulder and a comforting smile, and apologized for his brother. Which didn’t give Steve his body back, but was nice enough anyway.

 

Tony and Bruce kept working on a cure, which made Steve feel less hopeless even though they weren’t finding one. Clint sat with him one night when the asthma was particularly bad, after all the dust from the Hulk smashing Loki around had found its way into his lungs. Which was another thing Bruce had given Steve.

 

Sam, though, had the best and worst reaction to Steve’s sudden reduction. He’d immediately moved into Steve’s floor, and had taken over on any mission where they needed Steve. He made Steve take the medication for his iron deficiency, and his vitamins and made sure his inhaler was always prepared.

 

Steve’s close to falling asleep, the sky grey and cloudy outside and the television lulling him into a soft rest. He shifts further under the blankets, burrowing into his hoodie even more till just the top of his head is visible to the world.

 

He could just…fall asleep…

 

_There’s a heaviness to his steps. He’s back in his post-serum body, he can feel it in every press of his feet, in the shift of his bones. His perspective is far higher than it is when he’s small, which is probably why he can see the window at all._

_It’s small, a square glass panel in the wall that he can only see from his place several feet away, but he can’t see through it. His body keeps walking, despite the growing tension in his stomach that says run away! run! don’t look!_

_The air is frigid and crawls along his skin like predatory fingers, and it chatters his teeth against each other in a mocking tic-tic-tic._

_The closer he gets the heavier he feels, till he’s gripping the wall with the window desperately just to stay up. He braces his shoulder against the freezing wall and gasps. Everything seems heavier and slower, and distorted like his eyes are going in and out of focus rapidly._

_He grips the ledge of the window, finding it far deeper than he’d expected, like a mailbox with a window at the end._

_Don’t look, Steve. A voice, familiar but from so long ago…it whispers to him to turn away, not to believe._

_He’s shrinking, his fingernails scraping against the wall desperately to stay up. He has to look! Before it’s too late, before the serum runs out, before Loki changes him back, he has to **know**. _

_Through the window, which is frosty and has ice spreading across to cover it, Steve can just barely see the edge of a jawline. It’s closer to the window than Steve had anticipated and he jerks back. When he peers back, clinging to the window ledge like it’s a mountain cliff, he’s startled enough to let go, falling to the ground in a heap._

_An eye, startlingly blue and startlingly familiar, blinks slowly open behind the glass. A whirring sound begins as the window shatters, letting out the cold._

“Fuck!” Steve jerks awake, throwing the blankets to the floor in his haste. He tries to push further into the couch, the desire to disappear too strong for his mind to fight even knowing he’s now awake, and safe.

 

Hands grip his arms pulling him against a warm chest and locking around him. “Steve! Wake up! You’re fine, you’re fine!” He registers the smell of Sam’s cologne distantly and stops fighting, still panting heavily against the larger man. Sam shoves the dreaded inhaler in Steve’s mouth and pumps it twice. The medicine feels like instant life on his lips and he collapses onto Sam, a thin layer of sweat all along his body but still shuddering.

 

He could feel the cold of that room in his bones still, like he’d actually been there, like the winter wasn’t just in his mind. The chill crawls along his skin like the nightmare hadn’t ended.

 

“I can’t just sit here, Sam.” Steve panted, sitting up and bracing himself by grabbing the couch on each side of his knees. The carpet was fluffy and high-quality and he stared it down trying to catch his breathe and his racing mind. Sam’s hand was steadying and warm against his back.

 

“It’s going to be okay.” Sam started, his hand rubbing small soothing circles on Steve’s back. Steve jerked away, shaking his head.

 

“It’s not. Not while I’m like this, not while I can’t _do_ anything.” The nightmare and the restlessness and the general feeling of being trapped made Steve’s skin itch. He hated the rasp to his breathing, he hated the tower, he hated Loki. He was Captain America; he shouldn’t be hating anyone or anything. Just another example of that good ol’ human weakness.

 

“Come on.” Sam stood up abruptly and pulled Steve up by his wrist, his blankets falling to the ground.

 

“Where are we going?” He was dragged all the way to the elevator and prodded inside, where Sam pressed the button for Natasha’s floor. “She’s on a mission.”

 

“Just got back this morning. You’d know that if you stopped sulking.” Sam smiled at him to make the statement more of a joke, even though it was true. Steve sighed, crossing his arms across his skinny chest and watching the numbers go down.

 

 

“I think it’s a great idea!”

 

“You would, Steve.” Natasha shook her head at him like he was a child, and she was tired of mothering him. “Sam, I’m usually for crazy ideas like this, but have you thought this through? For one, - “

 

“I’d have to go on the missions too, already thought about how many bullets I’ll have to dodge.” Sam smiled at her, confidently and Steve found himself smirking in response.

 

“For two,” She continued, one eyebrow crooked up incredulously. “Steve is in a fragile state, and I know that bruises your ego Cap but it’s the truth. If we get Captain America killed there will be hell to pay.”

 

“Nice to know you’d miss me, Nat.” Steve says and Natasha smiles at him sweetly. “Nat, I need a mission. I can’t be stagnant, I don’t…I don’t know how to not be Captain America so put more padding on the suit and let’s go.”

 

Natasha looked between Steve and Sam, the both of them waiting for her approval. She sighed and leaned towards him. “You might not come back, Steve.” He stared down the hard glint in her eyes and shrugged as nonchalantly as possible, despite the tension in his gut.

 

“I got no plans tomorrow.”

Tony’s altered the suit, not only in size. He would have drowned in his old suit if it had even lasted through the fight with Loki, so Tony had to scale and retake all his measurements for fit. More Kevlar was added to the suit and the design was more linear, to make his tiny frame more aerodynamic like Natasha. Tony had spent a whole night showing Steve various designs, as if he hadn’t run into Nazi Germany with a USO girl’s helmet and a shield.

 

He didn’t care what it looked like, he just wanted in it.

 

Soon enough, he was. It fit like a glove, which was strange. This body had never worn anything like this before, only the body Erskine had created. This body knew 40’s clothes that bagged and Natasha’s clothes, not spandex and body armor.

 

When he was finished, he took a selfish moment in front of the mirror turning back and forth to see himself.

 

He was so small, and so lithe with limbs that held barely any meat on them. His feet and hands were too large, and his head seemed too big for his shoulders. He would make it on any battlefield because he probably wouldn’t be seen. Where he’d once towered over her, now just a little, he has to look up at Natasha.

 

Sam is practically a skyscraper compared to him now.

 

Sighing and bracing himself, Steve steps out of the bathroom and sees Natasha sitting on his dresser. “Ready soldier?”

 

“It’s Captain to you.”

 

“Sure, sure.” She hops off and opens the door for him. They both walk out to where Sam is waiting for them, and she leads them both to the elevator. “Now remember, this is a simple recon mission. I don’t need either of you with me for this.”

 

“Of course not,” Steve whispers to Sam who snorts quietly.

 

“If there are signs of Hydra encampment or if you see a Hydra soldier or if you see anything vaguely cut-off-one-head-two-grow-back, you do not engage.” She turns to smirk down at Steve, who glares back in return. “I do mean you, Steve.”

 

“Well I don’t got a problem with the do-not-engage part, I have a problem with how we go about followin’ it. We’re walking into a possible Hydra base, what are we supposed to do if it’s there? Hope they’re okay with postponing murdering us?”

 

“Do not engage includes not getting killed. Not getting killed includes not being seen.” The elevator dings and opens to the roof, where a jet is waiting for them along with Tony. He’s tapping away on a StarkPad and hands it to Natasha when they approach.

 

“You ready, Scary Spice?” Tony taunts, reaching out to clap Steve hard on the back. “What about you, Hermes?” He turns to harass Sam and Steve takes the opening to duck around Tony and follow Natasha to the jet.

 

“What’d he give you that for?” Steve asks, nodding at the StarkPad in Natasha’s hands.

 

“Directions.” She answers vaguely, docking the pad on the wall. Unlike the jets the team uses for missions, this one has no pilot seat, or mechanism. It seems like a room with wings, and Steve’s never been inside it before.

 

“Not to sound like I’m from the 40’s or anything but how do we fly this thing?”

 

Natasha snorted, her back to him. She peeked at him over her shoulder, a small smile pursing her lips. “Directions, Steve. Jarvis is driving us there, and he’ll pick us up.”

 

“Why not let us fly it? We’ve all done it on the team jet.”

 

Natasha turned away again and there was silence for a beat, before she glanced back at him. Her eyes were dark and serious, the smile gone.

 

“If a jet with powerful Stark technology is left in possible Hydra territory and no superheroes come back to claim it, does it do good or evil?”

 

Steve knew the answer and didn’t bother to ask anymore questions.

 

\---------------------

 

_DO_

_NO T_

_E N GAG **E**_

His brain is swimming with panic, and his body is tired and aching. This was a mistake, and he’s almost proud enough to not even admit that inside his head. Sam is gone, distanced from him during the Hydra ambush and Natasha is somewhere far away. She’d split from Sam and him, quiet and stealthy enough to be on her own whereas Steve needed Sam’s support. That obviously hadn’t exactly gone to plan.

 

Her last words before the split had been the reminder which Steve could hear ringing around his aching head. “Do Not Engage.” “DO NOT ENGAGE.” “Do not engage, Steve. Please.”

 

Except now he’s trapped, and oddly free at the same time as he struggles to find his way back to Sam in this labyrinth of opportunity. A left at that hallway intersection could mean Sam, could mean Natasha, could mean outside to the blistering cold but somewhat safety, or it could mean Hydra ready to put a bullet between his eyes.

 

He can hear their boots reverberating around the walls so that he’s constantly glancing over his shoulder, expecting to see an approaching line of red dots aimed at him. He regrets having come, he regrets having brought Sam. At first, he gets mad at Natasha. This is Hydra, this is destruction, this is modern day technology combined with 40’s hatred and violence and she was ready to walk in alone. Of course she hadn’t though, and that’s when the anger turns at himself.

 

How he hadn’t cared that he was a liability rather than an asset, because he’d been Captain America for so long. He’d forgotten that his presence was sometimes worse for the situation.

 

Now he’s reminded, as he runs panting down yet another dead end, knowing that Sam and Natasha are out there either fighting or being captured. Even if he finds them, he won’t be able to fight and protect them.

 

do not engage. do not engage. do not engage.

 

The lights flicker as he darts around another corner and when they come back on, like in a vintage horror movie, a silhouette is visible down the hallway. They’re not facing him, because they don’t immediately take him down. Steve freezes immediately, his blood running cold and he jumps back around the corner, pressing himself against the wall. The lights flicker again.

 

He hopes the silhouette is gone.

 

It’s not. Whoever they are, they haven’t moved or turned around. They seem to just be standing there, like a coat rack, but that’s baffling. From what Steve can see, and with his bad eyesight isn’t very much, they’re dressed like a Hydra member in head-to-toe black Kevlar and clothes. They’re massive, all shoulders and height. Why would they just be standing there?

 

Steve’s spine aches, imagining the damage that person could inflict on him if they would turn around and see him.

 

do not engage. do not engage.

 

The boots are getting closer, as well as the sound of bullets. There are no more hallways. Steve _has_ to go past the silhouette to even try to get out or back to Sam.

 

He’s small, and he’s weak, and his asthma is making it hard to run much less fight but he has to try. He has to fight until he can’t.

 

Natasha taught him the move, and though his typical fighting style is far more explosive, wrapping his knees around the silhouette’s neck is surprisingly easy. The jump off the ground is the hardest part, the tight chokehold of his legs is easy. The collision with the ground as he and the silhouette go down is harder than the jump.

 

“Fuck!” He chokes out, scrambling to get his balance and ready to fight but his head is spinning. Blood trickles down his temple, from where it smacked against the concrete floor of the Hydra base, but he scrambles back off the silhouette despite it. They’re not moving.

 

The silhouette is a man, with long greasy hair and a fully covered face and body. The only part Steve can see is horrifying and startling, and makes him gasp out in surprise. Shiny metal _fingers_ peek out of a glove on the man’s hand. He’s not moving though, and that’s what makes Steve inch back in for a closer look. As he gets closer he hears Natasha in his mind, saying “Do not engage”. He ignores her.

 

The man’s face is turned away towards the wall and Steve is too afraid to touch him and possibly wake him from whatever stupor this is. So he just leans over him, seeing that screened black goggles cover the man’s eyes and a stiff mask covers the rest of his face.

 

There’s something about it, like a WW gas mask, that makes Steve nervous. He should run. The man is obviously catatonic, and however he got in this hallway doesn’t matter now.

 

But Steve has never been cautious. He’s never been wary enough of death, especially since he became Captain America. Natasha should be here, he thinks somewhat hysterically as he looks for whatever is holding the mask on, she’s the only one with any damn sense.

 

He undoes the clasp and pulls. Before he can reveal the bottom half of the man’s face, there is an explosion. It’s near perfect timing, distracting him just long enough for metal fingers to wrap around his throat and throw him down. His head cracks against the concrete a second time, this time directly in the back and it spins. Dizziness would be an understatement.

 

It only got worse as the fingers tightened. Where the man had been catatonic before, now he was intent on strangling any life out of Steve.

Steve was dying, he was sure of it, as sure as the blood vessels bursting in his eyes and brain. He strained to reach out, fingers grasping at the mask, gripping the man’s greasy hair and pulling weakly.  His vision blurred till the man’s face was nothing but a smear of black in front of him, with harsh angles.

 

Out of nowhere, the man was pulled off and beautiful, awful oxygen rushed into his lungs. Steve choked, clutching his chest as he curled into himself. Living was more painful than dying.

 

After a second, he was able to sit up and see what had stopped his death. His head spun, his vision was blurry and his breathing was ragged and growing more and more asthmatic but he could see Sam. Strong and a versatile fighter, Sam was a good match for Hydra’s man.

 

Steve couldn’t get up; the vertigo was too awful and he was forced to watch as Sam fought for them both. Just as he was about to pass out, excessive blood leaking out of the crack on his skull, the mask and goggles were pulled off.  If it hadn’t been for the years of longing, Steve might have believed he imagined it. He might have believed it was blood loss, or oxygen deprivation or pure exhaustion that caused him to see what he saw.

 

But he knew that face anywhere. He knew, like he’d just woken up in their apartment in the 40’s.

 

“Bucky?”

 

The man ( _Bucky_ ) froze, metal hand holding Sam at bay. Steve sat up further, face crumpling in shock. His head was spinning, and he could feel the panic and disbelief building up inside him. “Buck?” Sam seemed to realize that the fight was on hold, looking in between Steve and Bucky.

 

Another explosion went off in the distance and that jolted Sam into motion. He ran to pick up Steve, lifting him off the ground and propping him up. Bucky was still frozen against the wall, his face uncovered. Black charcoal was smudged across Bucky’s eyes, but that was most definitely his face.

 

Steve would recognize that face in Hell, he’d recognize it in Heaven. He’d recognize Bucky in NYC at New Year’s from a brief glance. He’d know Bucky, with a metal hand or without.

 

“Steve! We gotta go, now!” Sam shouted as another explosion went off.

 

“We can’t leave him!” Steve shouted, standing his ground as much as he could when he could barely stand on his own two feet without help. The ground was shaking, and distantly Steve worried for Natasha wherever she was.

 

“It’s not him, Steve! It’s Hydra-“

 

“I won’t leave him.” Steve snapped, lurching towards Bucky and out of Sam’s arms. Sam groaned and cursed, catching Steve before he could fall. The closeness seemed to snap Bucky out of his own shock, and their eyes met. Steve’s heart clenched, shock running through his entire body like an electric current. “Buck…” He gasped, happiness and relief he hadn’t known he could feel combined with grief and regret. Look what had happened to them both. Look what he’d let happen.

 

The building was wracked with a third explosion and Bucky pulled out of their eye contact to study the walls before looking back to Steve. He shook his head; the long greasy locks Sergeant Barnes would have never tolerated shaking too. “Who is Bucky?” He asked, in an unfamiliarly gruff, almost whisper.

 

“You are-” Steve didn’t have time to continue, bullets rounding off around them, those dreaded red lasers appearing from around the corner. One lodged itself in Steve’s shoulder, right between the armor in his suit. The pain was excruciating but not as much as watching Bucky turn away from him. Not as much as having Bucky not know himself or know Steve.

 

Sam was dragging him away, around the corner Steve should have taken earlier. Steve lost consciousness around the same time he lost sight of Bucky.


	2. everything is grey without you

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> UPDATED CHAPTER COUNT: so there's one more chapter of this fic after this one: WHICH /WILL/ HAVE NSFW EXPLICIT SEXUAL CONTENT IN IT! many of you have probably cheered now. finally, we're to the sex. but still angst. but also kinky nasty sex.
> 
> the fourth chapter will be related to this universe minimally and will involve Sam/Natasha/small!Steve explicit content. feel free to not read it if you're here for the stucky. in that case, one more chapter!

A month later, Steve was still small and still recovering. The bullet hadn’t hit anything vital, and neither had any of the other attacks inflicted on him by the Winter Soldier, luckily. _That_ was his name, Steve found out after waking up in the hospital. The Winter Soldier is an assassin for Hydra, and had been pieced together and created through the recovered body of Bucky Barnes.

 

Steve still sees Bucky’s face in high definition, smeared with war paint and empty. Just one of Steve’s many ghosts, Bucky had come to flesh (and metal) and strangled him without hesitation. Took wrestlin’ with your demons to a new level.

 

No one really knew what to say to Steve anymore. Sam had tried his best, but not even the man who deals with people’s trauma as a career knew what to say. Natasha supplied him with all the information she’d gathered from the Hydra base, but finding out that Bucky had been tortured and hijacked for 70 years while Steve slept hadn’t been exactly comforting.

 

There was only one person who could help, and they had no idea what their own name was. Awake, asleep, eating, showering, all Steve could think of was Bucky. Nothing else mattered, nothing else existed.

 

He knew it was unhealthy, too, which made it all worse. His fixation on Bucky, on Hydra, on poring over the Winter Soldier files Natasha had extracted, was only growing worse day by day. Sam had to make him stop reading one night and eat something.

 

The fixation wasn’t enough. Thinking of Bucky couldn’t satisfy the intense need to see Bucky, to speak to Bucky, to touch Bucky. Which is how Steve found himself leaving the Tower the moment he was healed enough to travel on his own.

 

“Where are _you_ going?” Sam asks, eyes narrowed and suspicious, when Steve leaves his room dressed to leave.

 

“To see Peggy.” Steve answers, the lie prepared and served calmly. He’d spent hours trying to think of what could get him out of the Tower, alone and without raising any alarms, when finally, he’d thought of Peggy. It made him feel weird and guilty using her as a lie, especially one helping him risk his life but it was necessary.

 

Bucky needed him. In 1943 when Bucky had been held behind Nazi lines, Steve had charged in without hesitation. In 2014, Bucky is behind Nazi lines again, and no matter Steve’s size, no matter what anyone says, he _will_ bring Buck back.

 

“Alright.” Sam said slowly, obviously torn. “If you say so.”

 

“You think I’m lying?” Steve asked with a hard expression. He hated lying to Sam and sneaking around, he hated having them all worry about him so much, but he had no other choice. If he did…

 

“I think you haven’t been acting like yourself since-“

 

“Since I seen my dead best friend and he strangled me?” Steve asked drily, leaning against the counter across from Sam. He was still tired, standing up on his own for so long now irritating his body.

 

“Since Loki made you small again, actually.” Sam snapped. “I know it’s hard, man, to have your agency-“

“Don’t VA me, Sam. This isn’t about the serum-“

 

“Are you sure? Because you haven’t been yourself since you got small again, man, and it’s only gotten worse since the mission. You can talk to me!” Sam insisted, but Steve was already walking away towards the elevator.

 

“I don’t need to talk, but thanks.” The elevator dinged, sounding almost disappointed as the doors opened for him.  Steve got one last look out onto his floor and seen Sam watching him, a deep frown marring his face. “It’s appreciated, Sam.”

 

The elevators closed with a gentle click, and Steve exhaled shakily. He might not come back, if the last visit with Bucky had any precedence, and that hadn’t been the last conversation he wanted to have with Sam. As Steve got on his bike, which was harder but not impossible to drive smaller, his hand shook just a little bit on the key. Sam was a good friend, and a great man, one who deserved far more than lying.

 

He turned the key, starting the ignition. Too late now.

 

\-----------------------

 

“Natasha is going to kill you, and _me_ when she finds out about this.” Sharon sighs when she opens the door to a C.I.A jet and ushers Steve inside. “I could also lose my job.”

 

“You won’t, Sharon. If anything, say you were helping Captain America.”

 

“You’re not exactly on great terms with the government since you destroyed DC. I don’t know how much your name would help get me out of trouble.” She tosses a duffel bag onto the couch and goes into the pilot’s cockpit. “Why do you need to go to Romania anyway?”

 

“Seeing a friend.” He answered honestly, while still avoiding the question. He sat down in the copilot’s seat

 

“A friend you couldn’t fly commercial to see?”

 

He gave Sharon a hard look before turning to look out to the landing. The wind is kicking up visibly as they start the takeoff, Sharon silent with concentration.

 

Once they’re in the air though, Steve starts to regret not sneaking onto a Delta by himself.

 

“So you’re not a good liar, you know.” She smirks, eyes hard but still playful. “Why are we going to Romania? Do you need backup?”

 

“No! I…don’t need backup. I just, can’t let anyone know where I’m going till I’m there.”

 

“Because they’d stop you?”

 

“Because they don’t understand.”

 

“Understand what?”

 

“Sharon.” Steve snapped, glaring at her. She glared back at him, and then sighed.

 

“Fine, I won’t press.” She shrugged. “But when you’re dead, will it have been worth it?”

 

Steve thinks of Bucky’s face, blank and lost. His arm, once soft but muscled from the docks, removed and replaced with steel. His hair, long and greasy, and his eyes smudged with war paint.

 

“Yep. It will be.”

 

Sharon nods, and steadies her grip on the jet’s steering. Steve appreciates the silence, his palms sweating and his stomach tight.

 

* * *

 

There’s honestly no reason to believe Bucky would still be here, Steve admits to himself when Sharon lets him out in a field near the coordinates he’d provided. He’s marching into the burned out, destroyed ex-headquarters of Hydra, expecting Bucky to be there out of pure desperation. But he can’t sit around New York, knowing Bucky is out there, and not go crazy.

 

The air is freezing even through Steve’s stealth suit and parka. He walks into the near-demolished building confidently, climbing over fallen walls and dodging hanging electrical wire till he’s inside. It’s a little warmer in here, even with most of the roof destroyed by Hydra’s explosions, the walls blocking the wind. It’s dark, the minimal cloudy light streaming in the only source of sight in the ramshackle headquarters.

 

Bucky has to be here, Steve thinks confidently, though it’s all false confidence. False confidence bred out of desperation and raw emotion.

 

Natasha probably knows where he is by now, whether Sharon’s called her or he’s been tracked somehow. The idea of Natasha and Sam boarding a Starkjet here hurries his feet along, his small stride carrying him deeper into Hydra’s labyrinth.

 

He assumes that Bucky would be near where Steve had seen him, and he traces his path through the building. It’s more difficult than he would have thought, to remember every step he’d taken. Had he taken the stairs up or down here? It’s only when he reaches the top of the stairs and sees that most of the second floor is gone that he decides he must not have.

 

Had he turned left or right at this intersection? Or forward?

 

Three rights, one left? Or three lefts, one right?

 

Why had Hydra made this place so hard to navigate?

 

Finally, he arrived at a long hallway very similar to the one he remembered finding Bucky in (though how different it was from all the others was arguable). It was empty, the ceiling having collapsed at the very end. There was no one in the hallway. When Steve got to the end where he remembered he and Sam had escaped down a left hallway, there was nothing but collapsed brick.

 

Disappointment bloomed in his chest, panic building up. He couldn’t seem to tear his eyes away from the destroyed side hallway, and after a moment, he collapsed to sit on a smooth part of the debris. He leaned so his head was between his knees, choking on the panic.

 

Bucky. Bucky. _Bucky_.

 

“Fuck!” Steve shouted, hitting the brick. Where it might have once turned to dust from his strength, now it stayed perfect and Steve’s hand came away bloody.

 

He didn’t know where else to look. Hydra was everywhere and nowhere at the same time, which just meant Bucky was too. Coming here had been a dangerous long shot, and sitting alone in the cold wreckage Steve cried.

 

It was hours later when distantly he heard the sound of a jet, and he knew Natasha and Sam had found him. He waited for them to find him, listening dully to their shouts for him and staring blankly down the hallway he’d come in. When they finally got to the hallway and Natasha’s bright red hair appeared around the corner, Steve stood up.

 

He was so cold and stiff from sitting for so long, and the air was too thin for him to be breathing very well. He walked to Natasha, distantly hearing her berate him. She must realize he’s not in the mood for the lecture when he gets closer because she goes silent.

 

He walks past her without waiting, and when he accidentally makes eye contact with Sam all he sees is disappointment and worry. He goes around Sam too, numb to them, numb to everything.

  

* * *

 

 

It is weeks later, nearly two and a half months into his pre-serum sentence, when Steve wakes up in the night petrified. He doesn’t know why at first, as he silently checks over himself. He’s dressed in pajamas, warm under the covers in bed. His shield is laid on the bed within reach, it’s cold vibranium just barely touching his forearm. The lights are off, and the moon shines gently through his floor-to-ceiling windows.

 

Then he sees him, pressed silently and nearly invisibly to the wall, near the door. If it wasn’t for the barest glint of light off the metal hand, and off blue eyes, Steve may not have seen him at all. He may have rolled over and went back to sleep, and never known.

 

Instead he slips up out of the blankets to sit against the headboard. He moves slowly and cautiously, like he’s approaching an upset animal.  “How did you get in?” Jarvis is silent and seemingly unaware. Any of the Avengers who might presently be in the Tower aren’t pounding at his door, and there are no alarms. The Tower is silent, and so is Bucky.

 

Steve feels fear for a brief moment, when Bucky doesn’t show any recognition of him or even notice that he’s been seen. Then he reminds himself that this is Bucky, Bucky needs him.

 

He pulls off the covers slowly, his legs looking pale and weak in the moonlight. He’s only wearing a pair of briefs, and one of Natasha’s shirts. “Bucky?”

 

Bucky twitches, the metal glinting as it curls into a fist. Steve stops moving, stops breathing. His chest burns from the effort but he’s not above admitting he’s terrified. That hand had nearly crushed his windpipe. That hand is not the one that had ruffled his hair or stroked his cheek in the 40’s. That hand is dangerous.

 

Steve’s not above admitting he wants to see it better, that he wants to touch it and figure it out. He stands up, Bucky doesn’t react.

 

“How did you get in?”

 

“Second floor window.” Steve sighs at the sound of Bucky’s husky, unused voice biting through the air. It’s just three words, but it makes his blood sing with pleasure. It’s a step in the right direction.

 

“Why are you here?”

 

Bucky doesn’t say anything, though there is a surprising change in his expression. It falls, from the angry blankness of the Winter Soldier, to a desperate lost frown that pulls at Steve’s heart strings.

 

Steve inches forward, until he’s close enough to look up at Bucky’s face, close enough to touch. He reaches out slowly, his hand in full sight of them both just in case. All his nerves say to run, to find Sam, to call for Jarvis. That this is dangerous, that the Winter Soldier is _not_ Bucky no matter how they look. That his bones are breakable and if the Winter Soldier decides to, he could kill Steve quietly and quickly.

 

His hand comes into contact with Bucky’s flesh arm, though it’s covered in Kevlar. Bucky jerks in surprise, his eyes narrowed to slits and watching Steve suspiciously, but he’s not attacking. Steve pulls his hand away from his body, wrapping his hand which isn’t much smaller than Bucky’s, around the curled up fist. He steps back, pulling Bucky with him but Bucky doesn’t move.

 

They end up in an awkward standstill, with Steve vulnerable and exposed, holding onto Bucky’s fist but not being able to budge the man. “Buck, come on. You can trust me.”

 

Bucky meets his eyes, and in the dark they look rabid. Steve’s heart beats a terrified pattern against his ribcage as Bucky’s eyes rove over him slowly. Startling Steve with the sudden movement, Bucky steps forward into Steve, their hands crushed between them. The height difference is incredible, with Steve having to bend his head nearly all the way back to meet Bucky’s eyes.

 

“Who are you?” Bucky growls, the hand loosening from Steve’s to grip his shirt tight. “Why am I here?”

 

“You came to _me_!” Steve snapped, hitting Bucky’s chest but barely shaking the man.

 

“Who _are_ you?” Bucky asked again, more agitated this time and shaking Steve slightly. Steve froze, hands settling on the hard, armored chest in his eyesight. One of Steve’s hands slid up from Bucky’s chest to his neck, the skin cold like really was winter embodied. Bucky froze, startled but calm, as Steve’s hand continued up to the man’s cheek.

 

Steve’s pale, fragile hand and wrist stood in dark contrast to Bucky’s lank hair and strong jaw. “I’m Steve. I’m your best friend, and I’ve been missin’ you for a _long_ time.”

 

Taking the chance, no matter how dangerous it was, and no matter how precarious this moment was, Steve rested his head against Bucky’s chest. His hand fell to rest on Bucky’s shoulder instead of on his cheek. He smelled like gunpowder, and cigarette smoke – which was a familiar scent from the war. He also smelled like antiseptic, and musty like an unused closet, which wasn’t familiar and made Steve nervous.

 

Slowly, with all the caution and confusion of a newborn calf, Bucky rested his head on top of Steve’s. It was awkward, and stiff, especially with the odd height difference and the robotic way Bucky moved now. But it was like a cold drink on a hot day, and Steve exhaled shakily feeling overwhelmed by how alive he felt, from the slightest touch from Bucky.

 

“I think I…remember you. But you were bigger?”

 

“I was for awhile,” Steve whispered, remembering finding Bucky in Zola’s lab and how that had been the first time Bucky had seen him post-serum. The shock and awe in Bucky’s eyes had made Steve proud, he’d finally been what he’d always wanted to be and Bucky’s appreciation had felt great. “But I was like this before then, before the war…”

 

Steve, tired of standing and the place where the bullet had pierced his shoulder phantom aching, pulled Bucky slowly and gently towards the bed. He sat down by the headboard, and slowly, as if in a trance, Bucky sat heavily next to him.

“Bucky…what did they do to you?” There was an imperceptible flinch at Steve’s question, and he took Bucky’s metal hand without thinking. It’s cold, and larger than a normal man’s hand, and Bucky lets out a hiss when Steve touches it. At first, Steve goes to yank back, in case he’s somehow hurt Bucky or crossed a line (one that might get him killed) but he doesn’t when he sees Bucky’s expression.

 

Awe, similar to the 40’s when Bucky had seen him, looking down at their hands and the place where Steve’s flesh met metal. Maybe he’d never been touched like this, not for 70 years. It made Steve’s chest ache to think of how Bucky had been in that hallway, empty and numb like a doll left in a hallway till the owner would return. This Bucky, months later, seemed not _alive_ , but not dead. This Bucky moved and spoke, this Bucky’s eyes were anguished but not blank.

 

This Bucky curled his fingers with Steve’s and closed his eyes tight, maybe just to deal with the sensation.

 

“You can feel that?” Steve whispered, stroking his thumb along the smooth plates of Bucky’s palm. The mechanism was beautiful in it’s sophistication but horrifying because Steve knew too well what it replaced. Calloused flesh he’d held, and kissed, and sketched, gone because of Hydra. Hydra took everything beautiful and made it a weapon.

 

“Yeah, little bit.” Steve stopped, looking at the difference between their hands. It was strange, he thought, that this hand had nearly killed him, and probably had actually killed many others, but he held onto it desperately.

 

“I should go, before they find me.” Bucky said after several long minutes of companionable silence. His metal hand gripped Steve’s harsher, from fear? From reluctance?

 

“Hydra?” Steve asked, glancing behind them to where his shield glinted in the dark. He was in no condition for fighting, he hadn’t been before he’d been shot either. If Hydra came, they wouldn’t be able to sneak in through a window, but they also wouldn’t hesitate to blow the whole Tower up. “I won’t let them touch you.” Steve reassured Bucky even though he had no strength to back the statement up with. “We’ll fight.” He would, he knew, and he would probably die doing so but that wouldn’t stop him.

 

“No!” Bucky snarled, the rabid angry look resurfacing in his eyes. “You can’t be anywhere near them, they’re…they’ll hurt you…” Bucky trailed off audibly, but continued to mutter angrily under his breath about all the things Hydra would do to Steve.  Breaking Steve’s heart further, Bucky bent over and his hair blocked out his face. In the dark, all Steve had was the cold metal hand in his and the sound of crazed muttering. Steve tried to reach out, to place his other hand on Bucky, to wrap around him and protect him, but Bucky snapped up and jumped away.

 

He was pressed to the wall before Steve could fully understand what had happened, the muttering more rabid and more audible. “…you were so small and my arm…my arm wasn’t…electro-shock…hands, so many hands…so cold, stevie…” Bucky was curved into himself by Steve’s dresser, the shadows mostly hiding him. Both hands, metal and flesh, were tightly wound into fists but Steve didn’t let himself be afraid.

 

He crept forward slowly, hands out non-threateningly. Bucky was shaking, and Steve could see the vibrations almost visibly in the darkness. Needing it selfishly, and hoping it would help, Steve pressed his hand warmly to where he remembered the red star painted on Bucky’s shoulder. Bucky jolted but didn’t strangle him, and didn’t shut down.

 

“Bucky.” Steve whispered, his other hand taking Bucky’s and holding it tightly. The shaking was slowing, like Bucky was more grounded with Steve’s hands on him. “You’re okay, Buck. I’m here. I’m not going to let them hurt you.” Not again, _never_ again.

 

Bucky’s shaking stopped, and the crazed murmurs slowed. He seemed to slump against the wall, head rolling to lean on the plaster, hair and shadow still blocking his face.

“You’re not leaving, Buck.” Steve said finally, voice firm. Bucky’s head shot up, eyes wide and frightened like Steve hadn’t seen them since the 40’s. (not since the train.)

 

“Hydra – “ Bucky started, horror in his gruff, broken voice but Steve cut him off in the only way he knew how. In a selfish, risky way – Steve dove forward, hands moving from Bucky’s hand and arm to around his waist and his face pressed tight against Bucky’s armored chest. The much larger, and sturdier man froze as Steve hugged him, so tiny and fragile around him but giving so much effort.

 

The hug was desperate and tight, as tight as Steve could manage, and Bucky didn’t seem to know where to put his limbs. They hung at his sides blankly, and Steve commanded in his mind that Bucky would relearn this. When they were safe, when Bucky remembered more, when Steve was big and strong again – he’d hug him everyday so he never forgot again.


	3. to say that we're in love is dangerous

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so!!! i changed my mind and this is the last chapter of this fic!! thanks to everyone who read and commented, thanks to [amy](http://apiaristcas.tumblr.com) for letting me turn her sin!fic into a feels!fic and i hope she loves the finished product!! 
> 
> also!! i realized i might not have posted the inspiration for this fic, which is this gorgeous gorgeous [fanart](http://pium-poetam.tumblr.com/post/127540446467). (NSFW)

He convinced Bucky to lay down, because he was bone-tired and upset and Steve needed him. All threats and ailments aside, when Steve had buried his head in Bucky’s chest and begged quietly for him to stay, Bucky had succumbed. Only a little more than half aware of who Steve was, of who he was, Bucky’s need to protect Steve had won out.

His shield stood up on the side of the bed, next to the only handgun he had in his apartment of the Tower. A small handgun, it wouldn’t stop Hydra but it might slow down any Winter Soldier’s Pt. II they might send after Bucky.

Steve could practically hear Sam’s disappointment in his mind as he lay there, vulnerable to and welcoming a man who had tried to kill him.  But that’s not who he saw when he looked at him. The Winter Soldier that had strangled him was not the slack jawed, confused but trusting man laying in his bed. The Asset that wore war paint and Kevlar and would kill anyone in his path, was not Bucky Barnes, and that’s all Steve saw next to him.

Maybe he should go get Sam. He wouldn’t turn him over to the authorities, and he wouldn’t lock him up, not if Steve said not to. But he’d help.

It’s not fair though, Steve reasons. He’s uprooted Sam’s life more than enough, and dropping an amnesiac assassin and all of Hydra’s anger onto him wasn’t fair.

Steve would handle this himself.

“Bucky.” Steve whispers, unsure about waking the man up but too selfish to let him sleep. Bucky shifted gently on the bed, his cold arm brushing against Steve. He didn’t have the self consciousness or hatred of the arm that Steve had expected. He treated it like it _was_ his arm, always had been and maybe, that’s truly how he felt. Bucky couldn’t remember when his arm was natural, so he didn’t see a problem with it.

That would change one day, when he fully remembered, and Steve hoped he’d still cope with it well.

He couldn’t stop himself from reaching out, running his fingers through Bucky’s greasy hair gently. The hair was tangled, and dirty, and though it didn’t seem to bother Bucky either, Steve had a pull in his chest that demanded he get Bucky cleaned up. “Baby, wake up. Baby.” He shook Bucky a little bit, just enough for his eyes to flutter open.

“I know you’re tired but we should get you cleaned up.” Bucky grunted and closed his eyes. “Come on, Buck, you’ll feel better if you’re clean.” Also there was no way Steve would be able to sneak Bucky to the bathroom once it was morning, it was too big of a chance. Steve’s apartment wasn’t off limits, but his room was. Once the Tower started to awaken Bucky would have to stay in here.

Bucky groaned as Steve pulled on him, which was so normal and familiar it made Steve’s chest hurt.

“Come on, baby. You can go back to sleep right after.” He hadn’t called anyone baby so frequently since the 40’s, it was nice. Bucky finally crawled off the bed, his boots leaving mud tracks on Steve’s sheets. He’d pull them off later, after he finally convinced Bucky to get out of them.

Steve led Bucky to the door, peeking his head out to check the hall. No one was around so he opened the door and ushered Bucky down the hallway. The bathroom was Stark’s best, but immediately Bucky tensed up at all the metallic and glass. He stopped in the doorway, fist clenched and Steve hidden entirely behind his massive back. “It’s okay, it’s just the bathroom, Buck.” Steve ran a hand soothingly down Bucky’s flesh arm, and he relaxed minutely. Enough, at least, for Steve to push him further into the room and shut the door behind them.

“Just a bathroom…” Bucky murmured, scanning the entire room suspiciously as if for threats. Like a Hydra member might be behind the towel rack.

“We’re just gonna clean you up, and then we can go back to sleep, okay? When was the last time you showered?” Steve asked, turning on the water and trying to ignore how Bucky jolted at the sudden blast.

“I don’t know…they would wash me after missions.” Bucky said it blankly, like it didn’t bother him not to remember his last shower or that he hadn’t given it to himself. Steve sighed quietly, thinking about the implications. He at the very least hadn’t have a shower (or a _wash_ ) since the fight in Romania. Months ago.

“Do you want me to go outside while you…” Steve trailed off, gesturing towards Bucky’s clothes vaguely. Bucky gave him a confused look.

“You’re not going to wash me?”

“No! Buck, you…I know that’s what they did to you but you’re free now, you can do it yourself! Unless…you need the help, then I’ll help you.” Steve rambled on awkwardly, unsure. What if Bucky didn’t know how to shower anymore, what shampoo was or how to lather up behind his ears?

“My handlers always washed me…you’re my new handler.” Bucky said, matter of fact but confused till. To him, it was all black and white and simple. He was here, sleeping in Steve’s bed, being told to get clean by Steve. Steve was now in charge, no matter who he was, friend or not. Bucky didn’t remember a time before handlers.

“No, no I’m not, Bucky.” Steve shook his head sadly, reaching out for Bucky and taking his hand. “I’m Steve, your friend. You don’t have any handlers anymore, Hydra’s not going to touch you again.” 

“But…” Bucky cut off, looking down at their hands. His face was blank and expressionless.

He seemed to bounce frequently between the amnesiac Winter Soldier, looking for traces of Hydra and orders, and the Bucky Barnes Steve knew, who remembered him and protected him.

“You understand?” Steve asked, rubbing his thumbs over both of Bucky’s hands. “You can shower alone, and I’ll wait outside or I can help you. But I’m not helping you as your handler, I’m helping you as your friend.” (As your lover. As your _partner_. As _your Steve_.)

“I…okay.” Bucky said quietly, hand turning Steve’s over to look down at the pale creases on his palm. “Will you help me? I’m…rusty?” The word was said inquisitively, like Bucky had found it scrolling across his mind and knew it fit, but wasn’t sure how.

Which reminded Steve of something important. “Is your arm okay to get wet, Bucky? Did your handlers get it wet when they’d wash you?” The last thing he wanted was to electrocute him or rust up the arm or otherwise ruin it. It looked high-tech but without Stark, Steve had no idea what “high-tech” even meant.

“They never avoided it.” Bucky answered, and it seemed too careful for Steve to trust.

“But does it hurt you? Is it electrical? Does it rust?” Steve asked, the steam filling up the room from the shower still running.

“No. It doesn’t hurt.” Steve trusted that answer, as it was said in a tone questioning Steve’s intellect. Duh it doesn’t hurt, Stevie. _Duh_. 

“Okay, good. Come on, lets go you out of these clothes.” Bucky tensed up minutely and then relaxed. He followed Steve towards the shower and just stood there when Steve stepped back. “Go on.” Steve urged. Surely Bucky remembered how to undress.

“You can start with your boots; I’ll clean them up for you later.”

Bucky met Steve’s eyes, the expression in them unreadable, before bending at the waist to pull the laces loose. With them came dried mud, crumbling to the bathroom floor. When Buck stepped out of one, then the other, Steve seen he had a pair of the nastiest, dirtiest socks on. They smelt like BO and dirt so Steve ordered Bucky to take them off quickly, and had every intention of burning them later.

Bucky shoved them into his shoes without direction, and Steve was happy for that little bit of blockage.

Bucky stood there barefoot, his one crooked toe the only imperfection. Steve instructed Bucky to finish undressing and hands came up to the top of his armor, to the buckles on his chest. “Wait,” Steve whispered, suddenly nervous.

“Let me help you.” Selfish, selfish, selfish.

Steve’s hands shook minutely as he unbuckled the top part of the Kevlar, and unzipped it down towards the next buckle. Bucky’s skin, pale and straining on top of muscle, peeked through all the black. Steve tried to focus, peeling the smelly body armor off Bucky slowly. His chest was normal if incredibly defined. It looked more like Steve’s than it did the body he remembered from the 40’s, but there wasn’t excessive damage to it and that’s all that mattered. When the entire top part had been peeled off, Steve pulled it off Bucky’s shoulders and gasped.

All along his shoulder was the border between flesh and metal, and as high-tech and sophisticated as the arm itself was, the way it was grafted on was barbaric. Bucky’s skin was still red and flushed around the area, like it was a fresh wound not a decades old one.

“Does it hurt here?” Steve asked quietly, his voice barely louder than the shower.

Bucky’s head turned to the side, closer to Steve’s then before and he looked at his shoulder. “No. It’s old.”

“It’s so red.” Steve whispered, in a state of shock. He ran his finger lightly across one of the lines of skin, folded up and holding the arm snugly in place. Bucky shuddered but didn’t attack, didn’t swear, didn’t seem in pain. “Is it sensitive?”

“Your hand there? Feels like a thousand hands.” Bucky whispered back, and it was the most eloquent thing he’d said all night. When Steve met his eyes, there was a familiar heaviness to them that made Steve pull back. This wasn’t the time, the place, or the situation for that kind of bedroom look.

He couldn’t be that selfish. Or that risky.

“You can take your pants off, throw them on the pile.” Steve backed up several paces, bracing himself against the sink. He looked anywhere except at Bucky, even as the heavy black pants joined the pile of ripe dirty clothes on the bathroom floor. No underwear followed but when Steve turned to finally look, teeth grinding, Bucky was naked as the day he was born.

He wasn’t self conscious in the slightest, looking at Steve for direction expectantly. And Steve, Steve tried not to look, tried to not let the blood flood his cheeks, tried desperately to not be affected.

But his eyes trailed downwards without his permission, following the line of dark hair on Bucky’s abdomen down to his cock. It was flaccid, but fully in tact thankfully (which was a painful question to have to consider). Steve’s stomach tightened at the sight, and even more at the firm muscle of Bucky’s thighs and calves. He was massive, towering over Steve in a way he hadn’t even in the 40’s.

“Go on, get in.”  Bucky stepped into the shower, giving Steve a wonderful view of his expansive shoulders, narrow waist and tight, firm ass. He was a wonder, he was as perfect as Steve had been, but better because he wasn’t the wiped clean slate Steve was after the serum.

There was a thick scar on his lower back, right above the tempting dimples, that had come from a bar fight Steve had started. A drunk man had stabbed Bucky with a broken bottle, too shallow to do much more than superficially scar but Steve remembered cleaning it. Bucky’s crooked toe. The hair on his stomach, the folds and creases of his shoulder. It made Steve’s blood rush and he was ashamed of it. That didn’t stop him from looking though.

Bucky got in and stood under the water, it soaking into his hair and skin immediately. He didn’t shut the shower door though, water spraying out onto the floor, and he didn’t move for soap. He just stood there, obediently following directions but lost.

Steve had to help him, and he started to strip down too. 

“You’re naked.” Bucky said when Steve got into the steamy, blistering shower and shut the door. It was a large shower, but Bucky was huge and seemed to take up all of the room. Steve could feel only the water beating off of Bucky, none of the blast was getting by.

“Yep. Is that okay?” Steve asked, reaching down for the soap and lathering it up in his hands. He was trying to be professional, avoiding looking too much at Bucky’s skin and focusing on the task at hand. He was just about to hand the bar to Bucky and order him how to clean his chest and armpits when he felt a hand on his hipbone.

He froze, staring at a piece of tile past Bucky’s shoulder. The hand stroked gently over his sharp hip bone, tracing the entire shape of it before moving up and dancing over his mostly visible rib cage. The hand continued up, a thumb stroking hard over Steve’s collarbone.

Shame and arousal flooded his system at just the innocent, searching touches. It had been too long; his body was alight with pleasure. Bucky’s hand moved to cup Steve’s cheek, and finally their eyes met. Bucky’s hair was plastered to his face but it didn’t hide the darkness in his eyes, and the familiarity.

There was no fear in Bucky, and that made the shame lessen to a degree.

“We did this before. In the 40’s. It was colder though. The water wasn’t heated like this though I tried.” Bucky whispered, his thumb stroking across Steve’s face into his hair. They seemed to gravitate towards each other, Bucky’s chest and pelvis only a few inches away from Steve’s. Neither of them were hard yet so they didn’t touch there, but a few more minutes of this, of the heat building up in Steve’s belly, and at least one of them would be. “We had to sit, could only take baths.”

Steve nodded hesitantly, feeling in a daze.

“You were this size, I remember _this_.” Bucky pulled his hand back gently, a tiny nearly invisible smile on his lips at having remembered something.

“I was this size for most of our lives, wasn’t till you were deployed when I got big.”

“Why’d you get big, Steve?” Bucky asked, hand poking at Steve’s belly button curiously.

“For America. For you.” Steve said, distracting himself by starting to scrub Bucky himself. The bar of soap was slippery but Bucky was still and complacent, calm with his soft exploration of Steve.

“I like you small. It feels like…” Bucky cut off, but Steve kept cleaning him. He lifted Bucky’s arm enough for him to scrub the thick hair under it and down his side, all the way down to the sharp cut of his hips. His biceps were the size of Steve’s head now, and he soaped the non-metal one gently. For an assassin, Bucky’s skin was soft everywhere except for his hands, which were calloused in a similar way to the 40’s. Worker hands, soldier hands.

“It feels like…” Bucky tried again, but the word must have failed him again. Bucky’s hand moved around to Steve’s back, pulling them just a little closer together and making his nerves jostle. His large hand stroked along Steve’s back, the steam making it damp more than any stray water getting past Bucky. He was gentle with Steve, his fingers moving along the twisted spine slowly.

When Steve had covered Bucky’s entire chest and arms with suds, he stopped and pushed Bucky slightly to the side. The water would hit more than his shoulders, but not submerge his face, in case the shock might trigger him. He washed the soap off with gentle hands, rubbing in mesmerizing circles to remove all the residue before lifting Bucky’s arms to wipe off his armpits and sides. The entire time Bucky moved where Steve put him, his hands never removing from Steve even if he had to move them.

“You feel like…” Bucky tried one more time when Steve had finished his chest and was contemplating the rest.

Steve stopped, hand on Bucky’s chest and feeling his agitated heartbeat pounding. “What do I feel like, Buck?” He expected ‘soft’ or ‘small’ or even ‘vulnerable’. 

“Home, I think.” Bucky whispered, hand moving to stroke the gentle skin under Steve’s eyes and the vulnerable skin of his lips. “I don’t know what that feels like anymore, not really, but I think you feel like it.”

Steve swallowed up the knot in his throat, and took Bucky’s hand in his. He kissed the palm open mouthed, eyes closed, soaking up the heat of the water and of his lover’s body. It did feel like home. Bucky had always felt like home to him.

“I gotta wash your bottom half now, you okay with that?” Steve asked only slightly choked up when he pulled away.  Bucky nodded and Steve sat down on the built-in shower seat. He’d never used it before, but it seemed perfect for this scenario. Except that he was now looking directly at Bucky’s cock.

He ignored it and soaped up Bucky’s hips and thighs, feeling the shockingly firm muscle under the skin. Bucky felt harder than even Steve usually was, his legs muscle on top of muscle. He was massive, when Steve looked up at him it was like looking up at a skyscraper.

He couldn’t avoid it forever and finally he had to scrub the hair above Bucky’s cock, the soap covering the curly brown hair. The steam was going to Steve’s mind, his own body aflame just by looking at Bucky’s. His cock was slightly larger than it had been in the 40’s, perfectly in proportion with his body now, and when he took it in his hand to clean it, it was heavier than expected. He tried for professional again, though his own cock was hardening between his legs shamefully.

Steve glanced up at Bucky mistakenly, and actually felt the cock in his hand harden when their eyes met. This was wrong, it was so wrong but he couldn’t stop. He stroked across the slick, soapy skin again and Bucky’s mouth dropped open. “Stevie…” Bucky breathed out, barely loud enough to hear but Steve felt the nickname roll across his skin like a caress. He leaned in and pressed a kiss to Bucky’s hipbone, so close to where they both wanted it. Bucky’s hand came up to grip his shoulder tight.

Steve pulled back, releasing Bucky and watching his cock bob slightly, hard enough now for Steve’s mouth to water. He sat back further on the seat, ignoring how his own cock lay thick on his thigh, always too big for his small body. “Put one foot up next to me.” Steve instructed, looking anywhere except at Bucky. A well toned lower leg appeared next to him, Bucky’s knee at Steve’s shoulder.

He soaped it up all around, including the crease of his knee and the private part where his thigh met testicles and up under towards his ass. It felt strange touching Bucky here in a non-sexual way, though he had bathed him before. And he had all the same parts, Steve knew how to clean them. It shouldn’t be strange.  Bucky’s cock was fully hard now and it made it difficult for Steve to focus and to feel non-invasive. The head peered out of Bucky’s foreskin, tempting.

“Next one.” Bucky’s leg lowered, his cock bouncing as he switched to the other. Steve couldn’t stop himself from touching Bucky when he finished soaping the leg, rolling his balls gently and surprising a moan out of the huge man. Steve gave Bucky’s cock one long slow stroke, his legs shaking minutely at the pleasure.

He justified the touches in one simple way, Bucky deserved them. He deserved to be clean, he deserved pleasure. Steve wouldn’t deny him anything. 

Steve turned Bucky around so his legs and groin would be hit by the water and he could soap up the back better. He rubbed soap up Bucky’s back, down the back of his already soaped legs and all over his ass. The desire to bite the round, supple cheek was tempting but he didn’t want to startle Bucky with any type of aggression.

He settled for gently cleaning between the cheeks and giving himself one fast stroke to tide him over. His cock was startlingly hard, his brain nearly woozy with all the blood being directed south.

It was intense though, with the steam fogging up his mind and the sensual intimacy of running his hands over Bucky’s soapy, soft body. Was it his fault that Bucky was a god, rising out of the steam to tempt Steve? Was it his fault that the last time he’d touched Bucky like this had been more than seventy years ago? Was it his fault Bucky was hard and the only thing Steve could think of was sucking him clean and making him come?

“Bucky.” Steve said, standing up and turning Bucky around. Most of the soap had washed off on its own, the high pressure of the shower beating it off but Bucky was still hard and his cock jolted against Steve’s catching them both off guard. Steve moaned, his forehead meeting Bucky’s chest as he collapsed for just a moment. It was too much; he hadn’t been touched in so long. He was on edge, and he had no idea what time it was, and Hydra was on their ass and Bucky was his Bucky, and he was Bucky’s Steve and how could this be wrong?

His thoughts were scattered but his mind was calm as he wrapped a sure hand around Bucky’s cock and pulled slowly. Bucky moaned, metal hand coming up to cup the back of Steve’s head. He pulled against, twisting on the head and drawing a shaky strained groan from his lover’s throat. Bucky was gentle with Steve, his flesh hand trailing down his concave chest to touch the short blonde hair at his groin. “Okay, Steve?”

“Yeah, yeah, Buck it’s okay.” Steve whispered urgently, jerking Bucky a little faster, the feeling of a hard cock in his hand driving him slightly insane. A bead of pre cum bubbled out of Bucky’s cock and Steve swirled it down the head, protected from the water by their shoulders and heads. They both moaned as another bead surfaced, Bucky’s cock hard and angrily red from Steve’s teasing.

Bucky’s hand wrapped around Steve’s cock, and his vision swirled with how intense it felt. How had he lived without Bucky? How had he gone so long without his hands, without his cock?

Steve stepped forward just a little so that they were chest to chest, hands stroking across soft wet skin and jerking each other slowly and firmly. He shook and shuddered at the feeling, head lolling against Bucky’s chest and breath coming harder. Bucky’s hips thrust against Steve’s fist on every up stroke, trying to keep his cock in the tight grip as much as possible.

“Bucky, I need you.” Steve gasped, as one of Bucky’s hands swirled on his cock and the other, the metal one, stroked across his ass. One daring metal finger slipped between his cheeks, stroking teasingly over his hole.

“You do, Stevie?” Bucky asked slyly, his voice so similar to the cocky joking Bucky of the past. When Steve glanced up at him, hazy eyed and aroused, his eyes glinted mischievously. The finger pressed hard on Steve’s hole, not enough to penetrate him but enough to tease at it. Steve moaned and jerked Bucky faster, intent on having him come. Bucky’s eyes shut briefly, squeezed tight as he moaned quietly, and when they reopened they were dark and predatory.

Bucky shoved Steve against the shower wall, hand jerking his cock at rapid speed. Steve’s hand fell from Bucky’s cock, his back arching at a sharp angle and his breathing ragged. “Bucky!” He moaned his lover’s name long and slow, stomach tight with near orgasm. Bucky’s hand was smooth and confident, jerking him fast and hard. The finger teasing at his hole pushed in just the tip and Steve moaned wildly, head rolling on the shower’s wall. “Fuck!”

He was so close, his hands desperate at Bucky’s shoulders, legs shaking. He was going to come, he had to. He was either going to come or he was going to die, one or the other.

“Come on, baby. You can do it, _baby boy_.” Bucky whispered hotly against the curve of Steve’s ear, biting down on the earlobe immediately after. “Come now, Stevie.”

He obeyed, oh how he obeyed. His cock jerked hard in Bucky’s fist, cum coming out in spurts onto the fist and on Bucky’s stomach. Head thrown back, safe in Bucky’s arms, Steve shuddered through his orgasm, eyes squeezed shut around stars. He came and came and came, Bucky’s fingers softly drawing all the come out of Steve’s cock, squeezing the purple head gently for the last little beads.

“Oh fuck, Bucky.” Steve wrapped his arms around Bucky, feet nearly off the ground to do so. He hugged Bucky to him desperately, one hand tangled in the wet mop of hair and the other clutching Bucky’s skin. “Thank you.” He gasped against skin, mind hazy with orgasm. His body was languid, completely against Bucky’s.

“No, thank _you_.” Bucky said quietly, the words a mirror of a joke but so sweetly sincere it made Steve’s heart shake. Buck’s hard unsatisfied cock pulsed against Steve’s hip and he leaned down to grasp it.

“I can jerk you off.” Steve started, stroking the hard cock softly and slowly, dancing his fingers teasingly light. Bucky shuddered in his arms. “Or, you can _fuck_ me.”

Bucky moaned desperately into his neck, kissing the skin there roughly. “You’d let me?”

“I want you to.” _I want you to remind us both of how we fit together, of how good we feel together. I want you to call me your baby again. I want to love you, and give you everything I can._ “Please, Buck.” 

“Okay.” Bucky whispered. “‘Course, Stevie.”

 

* * *

 

 

_You’ve got me puttin’ time in,_

_nobody got me feelin’ this way._

Steve realizes they forgot to wash Bucky’s hair when he’s lifted off the ground and held up against his bedroom wall by the much larger man. It doesn’t stop Steve from twisting his fingers up in the greasy hair. He also realizes they hadn’t kissed in the shower, as he’s kissing along Bucky’s neck. That needs to be remedied.

“Buck,” Steve gasps, pulling his head back and panting. Bucky is a hurricane: kissing his neck, leaving hickeys, biting his prominent collar bones, his hands searching Steve’s skin everywhere. “Bed, Buck, _now_.”

It’s unbelievably hot that Bucky can carry him so easily, as he walks them across the room to the bed. Bucky drops him a little rough on the mattress, Steve’s blankets catching his fall and his pillows stopping him from banging against the headboard or wall. The drop is forgiven immediately as Bucky crawls on top of him, his shoulders and chest a massive wall between Steve and the world. He feels miniscule covered by Bucky, and where that feeling would bother him in any other situation, here it makes his pulse race.

Bucky braces himself on the metal arm, the other running down Steve’s concave stomach to gently tease at his cock. With a soft guiding hand Steve redirects Bucky’s eager attention back to him, and urges him to move up further so they can kiss. The height difference is strange; Steve’s feet are at Bucky’s shins. If Bucky were to lay fully on top of him, Steve might actually be crushed.

But that doesn’t matter at the moment, because the room is brighter with blue light from the barely rising sun. He can see the shape of Bucky’s lips, unbalanced, plump, soft. The look in Bucky’s eyes is soft, as loving as it is predatory, as focused on Steve as possible. He seems to have the same idea as Steve because his flesh thumb comes up to rest on the soft curve of Steve’s lower lip.

“Can I kiss you, Stevie?”

“Please.” Steve begs, arching his back so his chest pushes into Bucky and wrapping his legs around the large man. Bucky fits between his thighs perfectly, still braced not to crush him, but as close as possible. Their cocks press against each other sinuously, and their hips roll idly. Bucky leans in closer, his breath washing over Steve gently before their lips meet.

It’s gentle and it’s desperate, the press of lips hard in the need to be close as possible everywhere. Steve feels like he’s in heaven, and this is what it must be, isn’t it? In the 40’s they said homosexuals didn’t go to heaven, but he’s here with Bucky against all odds, so they must of been wrong.

They kiss forever, hips rolling together in a dance going nowhere. Even Bucky who hasn’t came yet isn’t in a rush, exploring Steve’s mouth slowly and his skin with tame hands. It feels like the first time all over again, except Steve can feel the metal arm propping Bucky up next to his head.

“Bucky,” Steve moans as Bucky’s cock hits the underside of his own and catches the sensitive part of the head. “Oh god.”

Bucky pulls back suddenly to sit on his haunches in between Steve’s thighs. They fall open over Bucky’s thighs, and Steve’s eyes are drawn immediately to his cock. It juts out of a crown of hair, the head so swollen the foreskin is pulled back and the flesh is nearly purple with need.

“I love you, don’t I?” Bucky asked, voice questioning but his hands sure where they stroke along Steve’s thighs and hips. “I can, feel it. It’s strange… I’ve forgotten my own name at least twice tonight but I never forget yours. And I’ve…been without my handlers for long periods before, but I’ve never gotten hard like this, Steve.”

Steve sat up, which was a struggle without being able to brace his legs but he did it. He reached out to Bucky, who pulled him up onto his lap, so their cocks were pressed together, but Steve wrapped his arms around his lover’s neck. He stroked Bucky’s hair out of his face, searching for the right words.

“All I know Buck, is that _I_ love _you_. I loved you when you were dead, and I love you right now.” Steve laid his head on Bucky’s chest, his cock softening at the heavy emotion in the air. He felt Bucky’s hands move up to hold his back, the most chaste touch they had shared the entire night. “I hope you love me.”

“I hope I do too.” Bucky whispered into Steve’s hair, hand stroking slowly on his back.

“Let me show you.” Steve said, leaning back. “Let me show you how much I love you, how it used to be.”

Steve fell back off Bucky’s lap and pulled Bucky up to kneel. He kissed him, the barest brush of lips, and with shaky hands Steve pushed him down on the bed. Bucky looked at him questioningly and he shrugged and smiled. “You’ll crush me if you’re on top.”

“I’m going to ride you.” Steve crawled on top, straddling Bucky. He leaned down to kiss him again, before pulling back to look him in the eyes. “And you.” Steve laid his hand out on the larger man’s chest, feeling his heartbeat and the firmness of his muscles. “You’re going to fuck me full of your come, just like you used to. You’re going to call me your baby, because I _am_.”

“You _are_.” Bucky growled, hands tight on Steve’s hips, eyes dark with lust.

“You’re going to _fuck_ me.” Steve whispered, rolling the word ‘fuck’ dirtily out of his mouth. He rolled his hips along Bucky’s cock, drawing a groan out of his lover. Steve kissed Bucky desperately, reaching for his bedside table at the same moment. He couldn’t find the lube, hand scrambling around the drawer until finally his fingers hit the bottle.

It was nearly full, he rarely uses it now and it’s usually not necessary unless he’s penetrating himself. He hasn’t since he’s become small, too disturbed by the smallness of his body again.

He preps himself quickly, kissing and grinding against Bucky the entire time. Bucky’s fingers join him teasingly not domineeringly, pushing just barely in besides Steve’s before pulling away. “Steve, you gotta, please baby, come on.”

“Say it again, Buck.” Steve demanded, pushing his fingers in deeper and brushing his prostate. His back arched in pleasure, his cock hard again. He needed Bucky, he needed to hear it one more time.

“Fuck me, baby boy. I need you.”

He rolled back a little bit so the tip of Bucky’s cock pressed against his ass and shifted his stance wider. The cock in his hand felt bigger knowing it was going in his ass, but he pressed back onto it anyway, needing it. The head felt massive against his tight, little hole, the same as Bucky felt massive underneath him. His thighs burned with the strain of straddling Bucky’s wide body.

He bared down on Bucky harder till the head popped inside and there he paused, moaning on the stretch. “Oh, _fuck_.” He drew out the curse as he pushed down even more. He was too small, Bucky wouldn’t fit. His own cock ached with the need to come and Bucky’s hand came up to stroke it like he knew.

When Steve had taken almost half of Bucky’s cock, he stopped unable to take more. It was bigger than it had been in the 40’s, and Steve was still the same miniscule size. He was stretched to the brim and Bucky’s hands on his hips and waist were almost large enough to touch each other. He felt small, and vulnerable, but the knowledge that this was Bucky, that Bucky loved him, comforted him enough to push just the little bit more.

“Fuck, Stevie. You’re so good, baby boy. I can’t believe you took all of me, you’re so small baby.” The awe in Bucky’s voice made Steve preen, his blood racing and his cock straining in Bucky’s hand. He needed to come, he needed to make Bucky come. Hands run up his chest, twisting at Steve’s pink little nipples before thumbs rub hard over them.

The first lift made Steve’s hole pull uncomfortably, and drew a near pained groan from his throat. The push back onto Bucky’s cock drew a moan deep from his belly, as it pressed against his prostate. “Fuck, baby, you’re so tight. Oh fuck, come on Steve, ride me.” Bucky’s hands pulled Steve up off his cock and back down, the intense friction a little too much too soon but forgiven by the second push on his prostate.

Steve’s breathing was shaky and uneven by the fifth thrust, and by the time he’d become used to Bucky’s girth, he could barely breath. His mind was hazy, his synapses overwhelmed, and his hole raw. But it was incredible, and his cock was harder than steel. Pleasure rocketed through his body and he held onto Bucky tight, the metal arm providing support in moving Steve up and down. The cold metal against Steve’s overheated skin was heavenly, and added to the incredible pleasure.

“Bucky, oh Bucky, I need to come. Touch me.” Bucky stroked his cock with one hand, and Steve squeezed his eyes shut overwhelmed and so so close to the edge. Behind them, Bucky’s metal hand stroked down between Steve’s ass cheeks, running one cold finger along the raw heated stretched skin of his hole around Buck’s cock.  Steve jerked hard, precum bubbling out of the head of his cock and slicking Bucky’s hand for even more pleasure.

“Come on me Stevie, cover me in your come baby boy.”

“Daddy.” Steve whined desperately, lost in the sensations rocketing his body. Bucky didn’t stop or question what Steve had said thankfully, and his metal finger pushed up into Steve’s hole along with his cock throwing his baby boy even further towards the edge. “Oh fuck, Bucky…I’m so _close_ , Daddy.”

“Come for me, baby. You can do it.” Bucky sat up, wrapping his arm around Steve’s waist and pushing his hips up so his cock went even deeper, slamming straight into Steve’s prostate. Steve half whined and half screamed at the intensity of Bucky’s cock going even deeper than before and at the second finger Bucky pushed into his hole. He was stretched wide open and his prostate was hit on every deep thrust. Steve’s head fell against Bucky’s shoulder, mouth open and drooling. He couldn’t breathe but it didn’t seem necessary. His body didn’t need oxygen it needed Bucky, it needed deeper, it needed to come.

“You come, baby,” Bucky panted into Steve’s neck, kissing and biting at his pulsepoint. “And I’ll fill you up so good. I’ll give you everything I’ve got; you want it don’t you baby?”

“You wanna be good for Daddy, don’t you Stevie?” Bucky whispered, just as three of his fingers pushed into Steve’s tiny hole and his cock slid up to punish Steve’s prostate.

“Yes, yes, yes.” Steve whined, bouncing on Bucky’s fingers and cock desperately. His face and chest all the way down to his belly button was red with exertion and pleasure, and he was covered in sweat. His thighs burned, his hole was raw, and his cock ached with the need to come. “Buck, Buck, Buck, please.”

Bucky was biting his lip, desperately trying not to come before Steve and just barely managing it. He thrust up harder, the bed banging against the wall. He leaned in to Steve’s ear, his other hand stroking madly at his baby’s cock. “Be a good boy, baby.”

Steve came, his cock spurting come all over Bucky’s stomach and chest, along himself. His spine arched forward, and his mind exploded. He could feel Bucky come inside him, feel Bucky’s fingers pull out and wrap around him holding him tight. Somewhere, distantly he could feel his mouth was open wide in a silent scream, all the synapses in his mind firing at once. He couldn’t breathe, he couldn’t think.

All he could do was come, and when his cock would give no more Steve collapsed in Bucky’s arms, licking come off of his neck. As Bucky shook and moaned around Steve, still filling him up and warming him with come, Steve rubbed his own into Bucky’s skin. The smell of them would stay on Bucky long after they cleaned up.

“Oh fuck, baby, Steve.” Bucky pulled back from Steve’s neck and kissed him desperately on the mouth. Bucky tasted like sweat and sex, and Steve wanted to drown in him.

When Bucky’s cock slipped out of his hole, Steve moaned in longing for it again. He felt too empty, he needed to be filled. He whined desperately arching into Bucky, nearly incoherent with desire. Bucky rolled them to lay down on the bed side by side and pulled Steve’s leg over his waist. Steve was putty in his hands, and was rewarded with three fingers in his hole, warm and gentle as they filled the empty space. He could hear the squelch of Bucky’s fingers in his come and it made Steve’s cock jerk, wanting to go again.

“I love you, Bucky.” Steve murmured exhausted into Bucky’s chest. “I’m so happy you’re here.”

He fell asleep content and warm, and woke up hours later stretching languidly. Steve reached out for Bucky, hands seeking warm flesh or cold metal, either would work. He found nothing, and he opened his eyes to find the other side of the bed empty.

Like it had never been used at all.

The only sign anyone had ever been there was the mud streaks on the sheets and the dried semen on Steve’s skinny chest.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> THIS WORK IS FINISHED.   
> thank you for reading.

**Author's Note:**

> thank you for reading!!! comments much appreciated :))


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